


All of Time and Space

by Anonymous



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: xover_exchange, Gen, POV Minor Character, Redemption, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-15
Updated: 2010-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-24 12:06:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry gets all the secrets, save one. (companion!Dudley)</p>
            </blockquote>





	All of Time and Space

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mute90](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mute90/gifts).



> Written for xover_exchange in 2010.

0.

Dudley gets all the televisions; he gets all the video games. He gets the computers, the bicycles, the books. He gets all the food, and he gets all of his parents' love, always.

Harry gets all the secrets.

Harry gets the secret school. He gets the secret books he's hidden somewhere in his room that Dudley's never been able to find when he bothers to snoop. He gets the secret friends who appear late at night in a flying car. He gets the secret stick he always carries in his pocket.

No matter how many televisions Dudley breaks and replaces, no matter how often he rubs his parents' love in Harry's face, Harry always gets all the secrets.

All save one.

1.

The sky turns yellow, a hand closes around Dudley's and a man yells "Run!" and Dudley's feet are obeying before he can figure out what's happened. It's not until they grind to a halt behind a building that Dudley realizes his legs are shaking so hard he almost can't stand and his breath is coming in short, labored gasps. He leans back against a wall and is staring up at the sky, now fluctuating from yellow to vivid fuschia, when a face blocks his view, eyes full of concern.

"Alright there, Dudley my lad?" he asks, but Dudley is staring at the sky, trembling.

"Is- is that magic?" he asks.

The man, inexplicably, grins. "No, aliens!"

Dudley nods, still breathing heavily. "Oh. With tentacles, like on the telly?" The thought of magic still makes his face sweaty and his arse itch with the memory of a tail, but he knows where he stands with aliens.

"Close enough! They're Pertorians. No tentacles, but they do have five eyes on long stalks." The man has pulled a small metal object out of his pocket and begins to fiddle with it while he talks. "Their home planet has an unusual composition of gases and they're preparing the Earth for colonization." The man pushes a button or something and a high pitched noise comes from the device. Dudley, too tired to wonder about any of the myriad strange things that are happening, stares up at the sky and focuses on the stitch in his side, now subsiding. The sky seems to have settled on an orange shade, far brighter than he's ever seen in a sunset.

When he glances over at the man again, he's peering around the corner of the building. He catches Dudley's eye and walks back toward him. "I'm going to stop them, but first I need you to run for me again." He crouches down in front of him. "Can you do that for me?"

Dudley shakes his head and tries to say no, no he can't, but before he can get the first word out, there's a loud crashing noise from the street and the ground trembles. The man grabs Dudley's hand and Dudley's feet work like mad to keep himself upright as he's dragged along behind.

They end up inside a dormitory that's been closed half the year for refurbishing. Half the glass in the windows has been blown out. Dudley sinks to the floor, and the man peers out through one of the windows that still has a full pane of glass.

"Right," he says. "Stay here."

"Wait," Dudley says. The man hums inquisitively, turning. "Where's your gun?"

A dark look passes over the man's face that Dudley can't quite decipher. He crosses his arms. "My gun?"

"How're you supposed to stop the aliens if you don't have a gun?" This necessity is painfully obvious to Dudley, but the man seems to be having a difficult time with the concept. "I've played lots of video games," he adds.

The man holds his stern look for only a second more. "How old are you, Dudley?" he asks, face softening slightly.

"Thirteen," Dudley says.

"That would make this, what, ninety-three? Fantastic. Right then!" The man points at him. "Dudley Dursley. You stay here."

There is a pressing question right on the tip of Dudley's tongue, but he has no idea what it is. Instead he asks, "If you're not gonna shoot the aliens what're you going to do then?"

The man pauses in the doorway and says, with a brilliant smile, "I'm going to talk to them." With that, he leaves.

Dudley stays. He doesn't know how long he stares at the wall, listening to the commotion outside, but it feels like hours upon hours upon endless hours. At some point, it grows quiet. At some point after that, Dudley painstakingly hefts himself up off the floor and totters outside.

The courtyard is a mess. A couple of professors and classmates are picking their way through the debris. Marwick, who Dudley recognizes as being in the year ahead of him, is standing nearest Dudley, scuffing his feet idly in the shards of glass on the ground. "Bleeding big earthquake, huh Dursley?" he calls to him.

Dudley doesn't answer, but stares up at the sky. It's blue.

2.

Dudley recognizes the man immediately upon sight. It isn't hard: he's wearing the same leather jacket, and he's still got those ridiculous ears.

"Oi!" Dudley calls. He walks toward the road, vaguely aware of Piers and the gang trailing behind him. "Oi, you!"

The man turns, startled.

"How'd you know my name?" Dudley demands.

"What year is it?" the man asks.

"Nineteen ninety-five," Dudley says. "December twenty-third. What are you, thick? So how'd you know my name?"

"I suppose I've met you before, have I?" the man says.

"With the-" Dudley stops abruptly. He's never told his friends about magic, even though he knows it exists, partly because it terrifies him and partly because his gang would think he was crazy. He's willing to take this strange man's word that aliens exist, but nobody at Smeltings seems to have thought that what happened last year was anything other than a freak earthquake. Aliens did it, Dudley realizes, sounds no less crazy than magic. "I mean, at school, last year."

"You do look familiar. Hang on," he says. He crosses his arms and tilts his head to the side, scrutinizing him. Dudley throws an exasperated look over his shoulder at Piers, who shrugs in a complicated manner that means he shares his incredulity at this lunatic.

"Hang on, almost got it... Strange name. Dudley?"

"Who are you, anyway?" Dudley demands.

"I'm the Doctor."

"You don't look like a doctor."

"I'm not _a_ doctor, I'm _the_ Doctor."

"How'd you escape from the loony bin?" Dennis asks from behind him. Malcolm and Piers snigger.

The man - the Doctor, apparently - ignores this comment. "Hey Dudley, have I shown you my space ship yet?"

"Ooh, he's gonna show you his space ship," Malcolm says derisively.

"Watch out Big D," Piers chimes in, "Looks like he likes 'em young."

Dudley jerks a shoulder for his gang to follow him and walks away, back down the lane toward his house. He pushes his sleeve up and glances at his watch. "'S time for supper," he says. "I'm going home now."

With a "Later, Dud," and a "See ya, Big D," his friends take their leave. Dudley glances back to where the Doctor is still standing, leaning against a lamp post, staring up at the sky. Dudley's stomach grumbles. Home is tempting. Mum lapsed into habit and started cooking up a large pre-Christmas Eve dinner before remembering he's technically still on a diet for boxing. He left the house today mostly because he couldn't stand to be surrounded by the smell of all that food. He's sure she'll let him sneak as much as he wants - after all, it is nearly Christmas - but...

"So, do they have supper in outer space?" Dudley asks.

The Doctor's face lights up. "So, Dudley, ready for a whirlwind adventure through time and space? It's just around the corner here, come on."

"It's a police box," Dudley observes. He's disappointed. Space ships are supposed to be sleek and chrome, or round like flying saucers. "How does this even travel through space?"

"Space and time, mind," the Doctor says, opening the door. "Go right on in and see for yourself."

Dudley's mouth drops open, and he immediately backs out through the door and onto the street again. It's... it's _wrong_. A massive space ship is just not supposed to fit inside a tiny police box. Things don't happen like this unless they're- "M- magic?"

"Dudley?" the Doctor asks, looking concerned. "Nothing to worry about, just the wonders of alien technology."

He steps inside, and Dudley follows him as far as the doorway, eyeing his surroundings warily.

"This is the TARDIS," the Doctor is saying. "It stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. The inside's just in a different dimension from the outside, that's all. Nothing magical about it at all."

Dudley peers around, still not entirely sure about this bigger on the inside business, but willing to give it a shot if the Doctor says it's not magical. After all, he hasn't said any weird incantations in Dudley's presence, and the strange glowing object Dudley saw him fiddling with doesn't look anything like a wand.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

"Huh?" Dudley asks. He'd been so distracted by looking the Doctor's words had caught him off-guard, but his brain instantly keyed on to the word magic.

"It means that just 'cos something looks like magic doesn't mean it is."

"Sometimes it is," Dudley says.

"Yeah, I still don't know about that," the Doctor says.

"But Harry-" Dudley says, then stops. He doesn't want to talk about Harry. He never does anymore, not since he's gone to that stupid magic school where he doesn't have to see him every day, but especially not now.

"So where d'you want to go, Dudley?" The Doctor is leaning against the console in the center of the room, grinning enthusiastically. "The whole of time and space open before you, and you can go anywhere, anywhen."

"Um..." Dudley says. He's not sure he still wants to be here. He wants to go home. He wants to break his diet eating stuffing and cranberry sauce and pigs in a blanket.

"How about we jaunt back in time and visit Henry the eighth? Not so good with the ladies, but I hear he puts a fantastic spread on the table."

Dudley definitely doesn't want anything to do with _this_. "No!" he insists. "Back in _time_? History is boring!"

"Boring?" the Doctor exclaims. "Tell me the Spanish Inquisition is boring. Tell me the Napoleonic wars are boring. Tell me, Dudley, the golden age of piracy is boring. Tens of thousands of years of human history behind you, and you dismiss it all because your history professor _bores you_?"

"I thought this was a space ship," Dudley says. "I want to see aliens."

"Very well then, aliens it is!" Judging by the tirade Dudley would worry he's upset the Doctor, but now he's smiling effusively as if it hadn't even happened. "How about we go to Eurpilon Nine? Wonderful climate, and you'll get to meet the coxlicts. Now these- Don't laugh! That's what their species is called! Just because it sounds funny in your language- anyway, they have two pairs of wings and three tails. What do you say?"

"That sounds more like it."

"Fantastic."

They go to Eurpilon Nine to wade in the large green sea that covers half the planet, and Dudley meets the coxlicts. Despite the Doctor's admonishment, Dudley spends the entire trip sniggering.

After that, they help resolve a civil war on Galactrix, take a brief trip to New New York where they shut down a rogue AI selling organs on the black market, and then help the people of Earth Space Colony 11AX5#9 with their demon hell spawn problem. The Doctor does most of the leg work, actually, but Dudley is able to put his Junior Inter-school Boxing Champion skills to good use when they face down the demons.

The Doctor, then, finally manages to talk Dudley into perusing a little bit of human history, and after some argument they finally land the TARDIS in Medieval Spain.

"You know," Dudley says, shivering as he steps out of the TARDIS back in 1995, "she was nice."

"Who?" the Doctor asks. "Catherine? Yeah, she was." He looks around. "Does it look like December twenty-third to you?"

"Doesn't the display in the TARDIS tell you when you are?"

"Best to double check."

"She was a witch, though?"

"What do you mean?"

"How she survived. I mean, I didn't think she was - back then they accused lots of people of being witches, right?"

"They did at that, yeah."

"But Catherine-"

"She's all right, Dudley. We got her out of there."

"She didn't get burned, though."

"You'll recall one of those demons hitched a ride on our TARDIS."

"But she really was a witch... wasn't she?"

"Why does it matter, Dudley, whether she was or not?"

Dudley frowns. Of course it matters-

He doesn't know why it matters. Because magic is scary and a big guy with a big beard gave him a pig's tail, and Harry could turn him into a toad or a newt or a balloon if he wanted to. Because mum jumps whenever she sees an owl and dad goes red in the face and makes throttling motions with his hands. Because magic is scary and wrong and nobody as nice as Catherine could be a witch.

"I should go eat supper," Dudley says.

The Doctor nods at him. "You've been waiting long enough. I'll see you again, Dudley."

'See you again.' The words feel like a life line thrown to Dudley in a sea. He clings to them. "Promise?"

"Absolutely."

Dudley nods in farewell, then, and turns and heads down the drive. He glances over his shoulder twice. The second time, the Doctor is gone.

3.

Dudley is twenty-four when he sees the Doctor again, on the street in front of his flat outside London.

"Where have you been?" he demands, getting up in his face. He's pleased to know he's probably more intimidating now than he was at fifteen. More years of exercise and growing into his shape have hardened him into something akin to a really big rock.

"Good to see you again too, Dudley," the Doctor says, not acting cowed at all by his posturing. "What's the matter?"

"You're supposed to help people," Dudley says. "Isn't that your job?"

"I don't have a job," the Doctor says. "I'm just a traveler. I wander from place to place. Sometimes people come with me. That's all."

"When we were traveling..." Dudley says. "You helped people."

"I did. I do that sometimes."

"You showed up at exactly the right time," Dudley says. "I thought it was odd, but you always got there right in time to help people."

"Coincidence, that's all," the Doctor says. Dudley's never been good at reading him, but he can tell he's closed off.

"Well damned good coincidence, but it didn't work this time," Dudley says. "You're broken."

Dudley definitely sees the flinch that passes briefly over the Doctor's face before it turns stony once more.

Dudley is the one to break the silence.

"They- we could have used you here."

"What happened?" the Doctor asks softly.

"I mentioned my cousin, briefly."

"The wizard? Yeah. You did."

Dudley doesn't know much about what happened, but he tells the Doctor everything he knows. The dark lord, the wizarding war. He hasn't talked to Harry since he saw him last before he and his parents left Privet Drive under the protection of Daedalus Diggle and Hestia Jones. The two tried to fill them in on what was happening, but dad didn't want to hear any of it, and if he didn't, mum didn't. Harry sent them a letter by owl almost a year later, after they'd been brought back to number four Privet Drive. It was very short, just a note to let them know that he was still alive.

"Well. Good. Good riddance," dad had said, and tossed it in the bin.

All Dudley knows is that, basically, a lot of people had died.

"You could have saved them," Dudley whispers. "You could have helped."

The Doctor looks unfathomably sad. "I can't save everyone."

Dudley looks at his feet, ashamed. He'd spent the months in hiding thinking about the Doctor, how it must have looked to the people they met when he charged in and saved the day with a grin and a cocky greeting. He'd been stupid to think that he could have fixed everything if only he were here, but he really did believe that at the time.

"You could have saved some," Dudley says. He looks up. The Doctor meets his eyes.

"Sometimes I can't even do that," he says.

There's something terrible behind the Doctor's eyes that Dudley can't put his finger on. They stand in awkward silence. Dudley isn't good at emotions.

"I'd invite you in for tea," he says at last, "but I haven't done the shopping yet."

"Quite all right," the Doctor says. 'I've been rather busy myself."

The Doctor is the next to fill the silence that follows. "Should be tea time on Thraxma at some point in time," he says. "Thraxma and Grelis are twin planets made to orbit around three different suns. It's a marvel of astronomical engineering."

"I'd like to see that," Dudley says.

The Doctor pauses before they reach the TARDIS. "Actually, you've never proposed we go somewhere yet, have you?" he asks. He looks cheerier now, but Dudley suspects it's a show - for whose benefit he's not sure.

Dudley shakes his head.

"Well then, how about you decide? Anywhere at all, Dudley. Where shall it be?"

The infinite possibilities overwhelm Dudley - so many choices, yet his mind is completely blank. "Can I think it over on, what was it, Thraxma?" he asks.

They go to Thraxma, and arrive some time before tea time, which allows them to watch the sun rise, and then the next, and then the next. They rescue the Thraxma equivalent of a PM from where they discover a shapeshifting imposter has imprisoned her deep below the planet's surface. And then they finally sit down to tea. Dudley tells the Doctor about Sharon, who he's been seeing for a while now. The Doctor won't tell Dudley what he's been up to, or how long he's been up to it.

What he does say is this: "Sometimes, Dudley, something terrible happens and we think, oh, if only we knew. If only we could do it over again, we could get it right this time. We could save everyone. The universe doesn't work like that. You can't save everyone."

Dudley bows his head and fiddles with the last biscuit on his plate.

Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor says, "All right, Dudley, had enough time to decide?"

"I think I need to think about this more," Dudley says. He's still drawing a blank.

They land the TARDIS behind Dudley's flat - "Shouldn't be more than a few hours since you left," the Doctor says.

He also says, "I'll come back for you in one year, so have a good one waiting for me, all right?"

Dudley nods, and then says, "Promise?"

"Absolutely."

When Dudley gets into his flat, he takes off his jacket which got ripped in the scuffle on Thraxma, leaving it hanging over the back of a chair. He flips the telly on just long enough to see that it's actually three days later than the Doctor said it was, and then goes to the bookshelf.

Once, years ago, an owl had flown in through an open kitchen window while Dudley was at his parents' house for the hols. Mum had shrieked in surprise, dad had cursed, and Dudley had picked up a wedding invitation addressed to the three of them. Dudley wasn't sure if he sent it hoping they would come, or knowing it was safe to do so because they wouldn't.

Dad had crumpled the invitation in a meaty fist, chucked it in the bin, and stormed off yelling. An hour later, Dudley had returned to the trash and retrieved the invitation, gingerly flattening it. On the front, a picture of Harry and a redhead Dudley thought he'd seen before, maybe tumbling soot-covered out of their fireplace, danced in slow circles, gazing at each other. It was magic, but it wasn't terrifying. It was a little piece of Harry's world, of his secret... just like the Doctor is Dudley's.

Harry looked away from his fiancee and up at him, and before Dudley could decipher his expression he folded it in half, and then in quarters, opened the top book on a stack on his desk and stuck the letter inside.

He has rather more books now. Dad and Aunt Marge had given up on books as gifts years ago when they finally accepted they would never find a book he wanted to read, but then he'd met Sharon and realized she rather liked when he bought things like books and artwork, and so his small bookshelf was nearly full.

He finally located the letter, stuffed inside Robinson Crusoe. Below the picture it says "RSVP by owl or phone" and below that is a phone number.

Dudley pulls out his mobile, puts it back in his trousers, pulls it out again, and dials the number.

The phone is answered after five rings. "Hello?"

"Harry?"

There's a pause on the other end of the line, and he can hear a woman''s voice talking in the background. "Dudley?" Harry asks at last, sounding incredulous.

Dudley doesn't know what to say. He doesn't know what pleasantries are customary to exchange after phoning your wizard cousin who you used to torment as a youth and haven't spoken to in seven years. Do you talk about the weather?

"Can you travel through time?" Dudley asks instead.

"Can I what?" Harry asks, and then there's a muffled sound when Harry's hand covers the phone but Dudley hears him say "It's Dudley."

"Your awful cousin?" a female voice says in the background.

"Can you travel through time?" Dudley repeats, so that he can't hear what Harry says in reply. "With, you know, magic?"

"Well, yeah, I guess," Harry says, and there's a noise of fabric on fabric like he's sitting down. "There's this device called a time-turner. You put it around your neck and then turn it over on itself, and the number of times you turn it, you go back that many hours into the past."

"So..." Dudley says, puzzling this out, "you can't really go back years and years into the past then, huh? Just hours?"

"Well yeah that would be impractical. You'd die before you got back to the time you started."

"Can you go into the future?" Dudley asks.

"Not that I know of... Dudley, it's kind of a surprise to hear from you and I'm not... I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but what is this about?"

"I just..." Dudley says, but it's _his_ secret, and Harry still has millions of his own. "Just curious I guess. Just some questions, that's all."

"Oh, okay," Harry says. "Like what?"

Dudley is a little amazed Harry is willing to answer his questions just like that. "Can you travel anywhere? Just appear there? Because I remember that fireplace thing but that's not exactly what I mean..."

"Well, there's apparition," Harry says. "It's... it's kind of hard to explain in muggle terms. You have to picture exactly where it is you're going - it helps if you've been there before, then you kind of twist and... get squeezed out at the destination."

Most of this is starting to wash right over Dudley without making any sense. He latches on to what it is he does understand. "What if you can't picture it?"

"Um," Harry says. "I guess you could get someone to make a portkey for you if they know where it is."

"Could you go to Mars?" he asks.

There's a sharp bark of laughter from Harry. "Why would you want to go to Mars?" Dudley's face burns red.

"Doesn't matter. If you wanted to, could you?"

"Well, you wouldn't be able to breathe. I don't think gillyweed would work in space..." Harry muses, and Dudley's pretty sure he's just talking to himself now, and not to Dudley, because the conversation is once again becoming incomprehensible.

"If..." Dudley clears his throat. "If you could go anywhere... in the entire universe, and get there any time, where would you want to go?"

Harry is quiet for so long Dudley would think he'd hung up if he couldn't still hear other people in the background.

" _Anywhere_?" Harry asks. "Regardless of wards, too?"

"Anywhere," Dudley repeats firmly, because he doesn't know what Harry's talking about but he does know what the Doctor said.

There's another long pause.

"I think," Harry says in little more than a whisper, "I'd want to go back to Godric's Hollow, before my parents died."

"What if you couldn't interfere?" Dudley asks, thinking back to the Doctor again. "What if you couldn't save them?" He still doesn't know exactly what happened to Harry's parents, but he knows enough to know they didn't really die in a car accident like his parents said.

"I think I'd still go there," Harry said. "I think I'd still want to see them."

"Oh," Dudley says. He decides to ignore how Harry's voice cracked, how his voice shakes. He doesn't want to think about dead parents, Harry's or anyone's.

"So... you got married," he says instead.

"Yeah," Harry says. "Yeah, I did. Ginny's pregnant now, too."

"Is it a boy or a girl?" Dudley asks, because that's what you do.

"We don't know yet," Harry said. "We want it to be a surprise. But we've already decided on names. James if it's a boy, or Lily if it's a girl. After my parents..." Harry clears his throat. "How about you? Are you married now?"

"No," Dudley says, "but I've been seeing Sharon for about a year now, and, well, the possiblity has come up in conversation."

"Not still living with you parents are you?" Harry asks, his voice gently ribbing.

They talk for another fifteen minutes before Harry excuses himself to go to dinner.

4.

The Doctor is not back in one year.

Sharon moves into his flat. Dudley finds Harry's Christmas card in the small pile he receives every year, which informs him that James Sirius was born healthy and Ginny is pregnant once again.

Two years later the Doctor still hasn't returned.

Dudley and Sharon get married. Dudley doesn't invite Harry to the wedding as he is almost positive dad will throw a fit and do something ridiculous like not come, or start a fight at the reception, if he shows up. Dudley doesn't exactly have a bachelor party either, though. His old gang from his school days has drifted apart over the years, and he goes out drinking casually often enough with his coworkers to not bother to do it specially for his wedding. He does call up Harry, though, who brings over some wizard drinks, and they drink and chat for an hour before Harry goes home to help Ginny with the babies.

The Doctor hasn't returned after five years.

Dudley frets for a while about their decision to buy a house, but when Sharon gets pregnant, they decide it's for the best that they do.

Victoria is born. Dudley gets a promotion to middle management.

Sharon gets pregnant again.

Harry stops by when he's in town, and he finally gets to meet all three of his kids.

Harold is born. Harry laughs when Dudley calls and tells him. Harold is, Dudley insists firmly, named after Sharon's grandfather.

The Doctor still hasn't returned.

Dudley's returning home from work when he sees a commotion off the side of the road. He pulls over to investigate, and his heart does a lurch of surprise when he sees the Doctor. He's in what looks to be a scuffle with a couple of men dressed in sharp business suits, but then one of the men... well, no human tongue is that long, or that purple.

"Now just- just hold on a second," the Doctor is saying, dodging blows from the one when the other gets him in a hold. Dudley's nearly there by now, he's got the alien in his arms, and it goes down quickly. He may be rusty, but he's still big. The second alien disappears into thin air.

"Well that's just... just fantastic," the Doctor mutters in frustration, staring at the spot the alien was standing moments ago. Dudley crouches over the other, checking he didn't hurt him too badly when he knocked him out.

"Hello, Doctor," Dudley says, standing. "It's been a while."

"Ah," the Doctor says. There's no look of recognition in his eyes. "We've met then."

Oh, Dudley thinks. There's a first time for everything. "You will," he says. He holds out his hand. "Dudley Dursley," he says.

The Doctor shakes it. "Dudley. Pleasure to meet you."

"I'll see you around, Doctor," Dudley says. He goes home. Sharon and the kids are waiting.

5.

One day the Doctor is standing outside Dudley's house, looking sheepish.

"So you found me," Dudley says. Despite himself, he is pleased. He did wonder, since the move.

"'Course I did."

"It's been rather more than a year."

"Sure has, hasn't it?" the Doctor says. "Plenty of time to decide where we're going to go next. So how about it? I'm sure you've got a lot to catch me up on."

In the first year, Dudley thought about the question constantly. He did so less so during the second, and even less after that, but the question - all of time and space, where would you go? - has always remained at the back of his mind.

"I still don't know," Dudley says.

"No?" the Doctor asks, raising his eyebrows.

"I never could decide," Dudley says. "I guess I just don't have that much imagination. But out of all of time and space... I'm happy here. That's all I know."

The Doctor grins at this. "You sure you don't want to take one more ride in the TARDIS, just for old times' sake?" he asks.

Dudley shrugs, hands in his pockets. "Sharon's pregnant again. Actually, she's due pretty soon. I can't miss that."

"I can get you back in minutes, remember," the Doctor says.

"Doctor?"

The Doctor puts on his serious face. "Yes, Dudley?"

"Did you really intend to come back after one year?"

He looks sheepish again. "I did."

There's a fond smile on Dudley's face. "I can't come with you right now, then," he says.

The Doctor laughs. "Fair enough."

"Come in for tea, though?"

"Sounds fantastic."

He introduces the Doctor to Sharon, and to Victoria and Harold. He tells the Doctor about his life so far, his marriage, his middle-management job. He tells him about the time Victoria was so startled by an owl delivering the yearly Christmas card through the bathroom window that she fell into the toilet, and about how when he and Sharon told the kids she was pregnant again, Harold insisted the baby's name had to be Aaaron with three A's so he would come first in the phone book.

The Doctor doesn't tell Dudley much of what he's been doing in the meantime, or how long he's been doing it. Dudley wonders if he's been alone, or if he's found other people to travel with him, for a while.

That night, after the Doctor leaves, Dudley tucks Victoria and Harold in to bed.

"Mommy was going to read me a story," Harold says piteously.

Dudley kisses Harold on the forehead. "Mommy's tired because of the baby, so she's going to bed early tonight. I thought I would tell you a story."

"Mommy reads me the story about the talking dog," Harold says.

"I thought maybe I could tell you a real story tonight," Dudley says.

Harold muses this new idea over. "Okay," he concedes at last.

"Okay," Dudley says, sitting down on the chair next to his bed. "First of all, though, you have to understand. Magic is real. And aliens."


End file.
